


baby, you know why we came here

by ohallows



Series: AU snippets [4]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, BASED ON THE OLD GUARD OK, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreamsharing, Gen, Immortality, Team as Family, kind of, they die but they come back immediately so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25650163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohallows/pseuds/ohallows
Summary: Being immortal is kind of a shite gig, when it comes down to it. The books, the movies, all the stories about immortality only talk about the fun bits, conflate it with invulnerability and power, and ignore all the parts of it that eat away at you. On paper, it sounds fun - you get to live forever, you get to escape death, and, in some cases, you can never be hurt. That’s not the reality of it though. Not really. Everyone wants to be able to continue thinking of it as a gift, an endless panacea that gives you chance after chance to make things right.They don’t talk about how much it hurts to die.
Series: AU snippets [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098191
Comments: 14
Kudos: 64





	baby, you know why we came here

**Author's Note:**

> LISTEN TO THE OLD GUARD SOUNDTRACK IT FUCKS
> 
> uh spoilers for old guard but literally just the premise of them being immortal u don’t have to have watched the movie first
> 
> ngl? this was so fun to write. i did way too much history research that isn’t even that relevant.
> 
> there’s a deleted scene somewhere where hamid tells zolf that he needs a last name and zolf picks smith and hamid just stares at him like “you could pick any last name you want and you go with SMITH?” he’s so disappointed

Being immortal is kind of a shite gig, when it comes down to it. The books, the movies, all the stories about immortality only talk about the fun bits, conflate it with invulnerability and power, and ignore all the parts of it that eat away at you. On paper, it sounds fun - you get to live forever, you get to escape death, and, in some cases, you can never be hurt. That’s not the reality of it though. Not really. Everyone wants to be able to continue thinking of it as a gift, an endless panacea that gives you chance after chance to make things right. 

They don’t talk about how much it hurts to die. Over and over and over again until you’re more scar tissue than skin, until you wonder if this is going to be the last time you come back or if you’re going to be stuck like this for eternity, even when the sun’s burned out and all that’s left is the eternal, ever-moving blackness of space. 

The actual dying part is kind of easy. Sure, it  _ hurts _ like a motherfucker, sometimes, but then the pain all disappears, and you’re left in a comforting blackness, an absence of anything that feels almost… peaceful. As though you’re in a dreamless sleep, with no worries or cares coming to haunt you in the night. 

It’s the coming  _ back _ that’s hard; you feel  _ everything _ , feel your skin knitting back together, feel the blood receding into your veins. It  _ hurts,  _ like dying a hundred times over, electrical synapses firing in your brain spiking throughout your body, and it feels like it lasts ten years even though it’s rarely more than a few seconds. 

And then you’re alive again, gasping and clawing for some sense of normalcy that you’ll never be able to reach. 

Being immortal isn’t a gift. You outlive everyone. You see the same mistakes be made over and over and over, people killing each other for the most selfless reasons, and regardless of the good you try to do, how powerful you feel sometimes, nothing you do actually helps. Not in a grand sense, not that you can see. 

And, at the end of it all, the only thing you’re left with is a body covered in scars.

—

**[80 A.D.]**

Zolf had never wanted to be immortal. He’d never believed in any of it, really, the whole… afterlife gag. He hadn’t had much faith to begin with, after Feryn - after Feryn. 

It had started with a war; Zolf had been young and stupid and his brother had been  _ dead  _ and he’d run away from home, been conscripted into a stupid army that never cared that he was barely more than a child, only cared that he was another body they could shove into the front lines. The boys in the front lines used knives and axes and the boys in the back used arrows, and they all died the same. Some believed in the gods, still, but most of them gave up on any notion of peace and protection after the first few weeks stuck in the trenches. 

Zolf had been lucky, luckier than the rest. Him surviving the first few years of the war hadn’t been due to any sort of skill; he’d shown remarkable talent for being a medic, listening well and quickly memorising the different kinds of plants and herbs that would staunch most wounds. The healer on staff took him under her wing - her name was Erika, and even years later Zolf remembers with perfect clarity the way the blood has bubbled up through her throat when an arrow pierced it clean through. Nothing he’d done had been able to save her from that wound. 

It had been years later that he’d died, just a way to follow in her footsteps, in another small fight just outside some city he no longer remembers the name of. It had been a bloodbath; he’d been taking medicine to the front lines, desperately trying to save anyone he could along the way, but the second he reached the front, he’d been shot, riddled through with arrows as they pierced his skin and left him nothing but a broken, bleeding body in the dirt. 

The blackness had been nice. But it didn’t last. 

Because he woke  _ up,  _ coughing and groaning as the tears in his skin slowly knit themselves back together. The arrows slowly pushed themselves out of his body as he began to heal, leaving small white scars where they’d been. 

He’d run, after that. Can’t very well stick around when enough of your mates had seen you crawl your way back to living. Plus, he’s good at running. That’s what he’s been doing ever since the mines, anyway, refusing to look back. Funny how something can just become a natural part of your life. 

So, he runs. And keeps running. And over the years, Zolf learns a few things. He loses a few things, too, but no one ever said that wisdom came without a price. After a while, he keeps it under wraps; being burned at the stake for having powers that no one can explain hurts bad enough the first time. He has to keep moving; he’s lucky enough that he can usually keep the questions of his aging to a minimum, but after 40 or so years, he starts getting suspicious looks. So he leaves, starts a new life, takes on a new name, and stays there for as long as he can before he has to go off again, find a new place to call home for a bit. 

It’s lonely. But the most important lesson, and the one that’s been the hardest for Zolf to learn, is not to get close to anyone. They’ll all end up leaving, through choice or through fate, in the end. 

—

**[270 A.D.]**

When the first dream comes, nearly 200 years after Zolf’s realised that he’s never going to die, Zolf doesn’t think much of it. It’s nothing but flashes of images, knives scraping against skin and shadows moving just outside of his line of sight, an aerial shot of some city he can recognise but can’t place, and then a final stab of pain in his throat as he wakes, heart pounding. His ax is in his hands before he even thinks about it, but nothing is there in the room around him. He’s alone, just like he always has been, and just like he always will be. He takes another swig of the whiskey sitting by the side of his bed and rubs at his temples. Thankfully, being immortal didn’t mean he couldn’t get drunk; god knows what he would have done. 

The dream is still stuck in his head as he carefully secures his peg leg, standing on unsteady feet as he reacclimates to the balance. (Weirdly, the immortality thing hadn’t solved that. Not that he  _ wanted  _ it to, of course; he’d been used to the peg leg ever since he’d lost his leg in the mining accident that took his brother away from him.) Certain parts of the dream are much more stark than others, which isn’t anything out of the ordinary. He would have sworn that the city must have been somewhere on the southern border of the  _ provincia britannia,  _ but it’s been so long since he’s traveled up that way that he has no idea whether he’s right. 

Not that any of it  _ matters. _ It’s just a dream, after all. Nothing to think about beyond that, even if there’s an insistent  _ something  _ poking at the back of his mind. Zolf pushes it away and ignores it, because if there’s one thing he’s learned in the centuries he’s been alive, anything important will end up showing up before long.

He’s not wrong, either. How it actually goes: Zolf finds Sasha first. Well - she finds him, really. He wakes up to a knife at his throat and a shadow hovering over him, face hidden in the dark. He can’t make everything out, but he does recognise her from the dream, remembers the way that knives flashed in the candlelight. She doesn’t move, completely still, but the knife is sharp against his throat and he can feel it pressing into his skin when he swallows. He moves, slightly, and the knife presses in just a bit deeper, steel cutting through skin in a shallow slit as Zolf winces in pain. 

“Don’t.” It’s not a request, and Zolf acquiesces. 

“You can kill me if you want,” he says, largely unconcerned. “It won’t stick.”

That throws her a bit. Zolf can see it in her eyes, but she doesn’t move and, more importantly, doesn’t run the knife through his throat to test if he’s lying. 

“Why did I see you in my dreams? This  _ place?”  _ she hisses.

“I don’t know,” Zolf says, and it’s definitely not the right answer because the knife cuts a little bit deeper than he’d wanted it to. Still, it’s only shallow; this clearly isn’t her first time around a knife  _ or  _ an interrogation. “Okay, okay, er,  _ ow.  _ I really don’t. I’m not  _ lying,  _ I just - okay, look, we - I mean, this is the first time I’ve had the dream too, but I think it means you and I are… the same.”

“What the hell does that mean?” she asks. 

“I’m immortal. I don’t stay dead. And, apparently, since I dreamt of you dying and coming back, I’m not the only one. You’re immortal, too,” he says bluntly, and she… well, the only word for it is  _ freezes,  _ really, knife still at his throat.

“I’m… what?” she whispers, voice catching on the last word there. “That - that’s not possible. The, the… that can’t be right.”

Zolf gives her a look. “How’d that last fight go, then?” he asks, because the dream is stronger in his mind, now, as he looks at her. She flinches slightly, free hand going up and pressing at a spot right across her heart - must have been where the knife entered, Zolf realises.

“I didn’t - it - it  _ missed,  _ yeah, and then I woke up and I were all alone on the street, my mates, they - I dunno, must have thought I were dead, but I  _ wasn’t.” _

“Do you even have a wound there, or is it just a scar?” Zolf asks, rhetorical. “Because I  _ know  _ it’s a scar, based on how you look, and I also know that there’s no way a scar forms that quick.”

“That’s… not possible,” she says again, shaking her head. 

Zolf sighs, steeling himself as he jerks his neck so that the knife slices through his skin. It’s not his favorite way to die, but it will make his godsdamned  _ point  _ at least. The knife cuts as easily through as though it’s butter, and Zolf feels every tear until the blackness swallows him up again. 

When he comes back to himself, blood spilled all down the front of his tunic, the girl is sitting off at the side, staring at him in a mix of horror and confusion. He sits up and cracks his neck, frowning. Could have been worse, he supposes, and then leans back against the wall, staring across the room at the girl. She’s younger than Zolf thought she was, a bit more green than Zolf had maybe understood. Her knuckles are white where she’s gripping her knife. 

“I can’t have been the first person you’ve seen die,” Zolf says, quirking his eyebrow up, and she doesn’t respond for a moment.

“First person I’ve seen come back like that,” she finally mutters.

“What’s your name?” Zolf asks, rubbing at the small line that the knife left on his throat. She doesn’t respond, staring at him in distrust. “Oh, come on, I’m not going to tell anyone. And you watched me die, so.”

“...Sasha,” she says, looking for all the world like she doesn’t know what to make of him. That’s fine, he wouldn’t, either. He doesn’t press for a second name, but he does notice the massive gap there and tucks it away in the back of his head.

“Well, Sasha,” he says, and pulls out a flask full of liquor, wiping the blood off the metal.

“Fancy a drink?”

She takes the drink, and Zolf learns her story. About how she was being chased by her uncle, and how her cousin left her behind, and how this was the only time she wasn’t quick enough. Zolf doesn’t press her for more details, and she doesn’t provide them. 

Afterward, she doesn’t leave, which is nice. 

Zolf doesn’t see Sasha dying outside of dreams until a few years later. She’s  _ good,  _ too good and quick to get caught most of the time, but even skill can only do so much. 

Sasha dying is… quiet. The first - well, second, really, not counting the death that turned her - time she dies, Zolf thinks it’s a fluke. She’s so still for so long, not even letting out a shout of pain as she’d dropped. It takes longer than it does to heal him, which might be because it’s the first time, Zolf really doesn’t know. It’s not like there’s been anyone to  _ test  _ this with.

He panics, a bit; it had been so long being alone, so long being the only person who knew how this felt, and then there had been Sasha, and Zolf had broken the rule of not getting  _ close _ to people, and now he was going to be all alone  _ again,  _ just like always, and - 

Sasha breathes, shoulder moving infinitesimally under his hand. Zolf’s own breath stops for a minute as he listens. She comes back to herself nearly silently; the only reason Zolf even  _ knows  _ she’s back is that he can see the spear wounds healing themselves along her skin, and her chest starts rising and falling nearly imperceptibly. A soft, distressed sound comes from her mouth, a drawn-out groan that Zolf can only hear because he’s beside her. 

“You good?” he asks, helping her to her feet. She looks slightly panicked now, realising that there’s no one around but Zolf, and starts patting at her body, arms and legs and stomach and head.

“I - I think so? Did - Zolf, is everything in the right place? Do my organs just grow back or something? How - Zolf, what if my -“

“Okay, calm down,” Zolf says, sitting Sasha back down again in case she passes out. “You’re fine. Yes, everything grows back. We can do a proper examination once we’re out of this blasted room, okay?” 

She doesn’t look completely comforted, but she does look less on the verge of freaking out, so Zolf calls it a win. He helps her out of the room, one arm slung over his shoulders, and they head out until Zolf finds a nice wall to lean her up against after all. 

“Guess it wasn’t a fluke, then,” she mutters, arms wrapped around herself as though she’s not sure what to do with them other than this. 

“Afraid not,” Zolf says, a mix of gruffness and genuine sincerity. Sasha doesn’t say anything else, just nods and rubs at her abdomen, where the final spear had pierced her through. 

He maybe should say something. He  _ would  _ say something, if he knew what to say. Gods, what do you even  _ say _ after someone’s died and come back? Zolf doesn’t really know. This hasn’t been a focus of his life until now. 

“Got a new job for us,” Zolf says instead of anything else, and Sasha perks up a bit. That’s something. “Pretty far away, but seems like an easy run.”

Sasha hums. “Will there be nice daggers there?” she asks, and Zolf’s pretty sure it’s a rhetorical question, but answers anyway.

“I mean, probably? It’s a pretty bustling city from what I remember of it. Could probably find a few to buy.”

That seems to be a good enough guarantee for Sasha, who pushes off the wall and starts leaving, letting Zolf follow her in her wake. It’s a show of trust, letting him be at her back, but he still speeds up until they’re walking side-by-side. “So, where is this place, anyway?” Sasha asks, rubbing the last bits of dust off of her tunic as she casts an irritated look at the blood drying on the fabric. “Gods, this is gonna be a mess to get out.”

“Well,” Zolf says, and pulls out the sheet of paper with the request on it. “Fancy a trip to Rome?” 

—

**[649 A.D.]**

“There’s a new one,” Sasha says hollowly as her and Zolf rest against each other. She’s got two knives in her hands in a vice grip, and Zolf’s head is resting against her shoulder. Sasha had woken up - not screaming, not like Zolf had the first time he’d had dreams of her dying and coming back - at the same time at Zolf, staring at him in the dark with confusion and a haunted look in her eyes as he was unceremoniously shunted into consciousness from the same dream. He’d tossed her a glass of whiskey to help dull the images swirling around in her mind, the same ones that Zolf could see, 

Fire. Mostly fire, actually. He could still feel the smoke crawling up through his lungs, choking him, feel the flames licking at his skin. It hadn’t been a pleasant death - not like any of them  _ were,  _ really, but this had been slow and awful and  _ painful,  _ and Zolf can’t shake the effects of it even hours later.

“Anything you recognised?” he asks, exhaustion clear in his voice. Being tired is  _ also  _ something being immortal doesn’t protect you from, as much as Zolf wished it did. 

Sasha nods, slowly, against his shoulder. “Saw… pyramids. I think. Islamic empire, if I had to guess.”

“Northeastern Africa…” Zolf mutters and stands, leaving Sasha sitting there alone as he goes over to his stacks of paper. “We were there. Recently, er - there was a war there, last I’d heard. Wonder if he’s some poor soldier, stuck in the war to support his family?”

“Don’t think so, mate,” Sasha says, sounding just as tired as Zolf feels. “You saw how ornate the house was, yeah? No way he’s a soldier.”

Zolf chews on his lip. “There’s gotta be something else. Something we’re missing.” He thinks back to the dream; the images are still clear in his mind, more clear than they had been when he’d dreamt about Sasha, and he wonders if now that there’s two of them, they’re more… in tune. Or something like that, at least. He closes his eyes, as though that will help, and is a bit surprised when it actually  _ does.  _

“The sign -“ he gasps, eyes shooting open. “I can read it.”

Sasha raises an eyebrow as she looks at him. “You know the language?”

“Arabic,” Zolf says. “Learned it a few centuries ago on a whim. Thought it would come in handy.”

“So?” Sasha asks, shifting away to sit on her knees as she looks at Zolf and tilts her head. “What’d it say?”

“Babylon,” Zolf says. “I think. Most - I mean, I’m pretty sure. Mostly sure, really. Been a few, er. Decades. Since I last tried to read it, but, er - yeah. Babylon.”

“And do you know where that is?” Sasha asks, resting her chin on her knees, and Zolf shrugs. 

“Vaguely. Around Egypt. Should be able to ask around at a port. We should… really invest in a map, one of these days. Would make travel  _ loads  _ easier.”

Sasha looks conflicted, and Zolf doesn’t think it’s to his suggestion of getting a map. “You sure we actually want to go find him, boss?” she asks, and Zolf shrugs.

“Don’t think this one will be as good as you are about finding out what the hell is going on.”

Sasha snorts. “Yeah. Maybe. Okay.”

And with that, Egypt it is. The boat trip is a nightmare, but less than Zolf had been expecting, and he spends most of his time asleep when he’s not getting sick. They dock, find the cheapest lodgings they can, and then set off to find the newest person who’s like them.

Sasha seems at home in the city; she’s never been here before, Zolf knows, but there’s something about cities that Sasha always seems to feel comforted by, and she’s well good at making her way around even when it’s a new city. It makes sense that she’s the one to find their newest… recruit? teammate, maybe? Zolf needs to work on that. The guy is young as well, maybe a year or so older than Sasha, if that, and he’s going about his day as normal. He’s got long sleeves on - Zolf thinks it’s to cover up the scars - and even though he’s laughing and chatting with all the vendors, it’s clear to Zolf that he’s on edge. 

It’s easy enough to wait until he’s on the way home to grab him and pull him in between buildings and press him up against a wall while Sasha keeps an eye out. 

Hamid takes it… hm. About as well as Zolf had expected - which is to say, not well at all. It’s fair, honestly; Zolf really can’t fault him for that, considering that it does sound outlandish. He’s just glad he picked up Arabic sometime in the early 200s so that he and Sasha can communicate with Hamid. He doesn’t believe them, at first, to which Sasha pulls a knife out; Zolf motions for her to put it away - he doesn’t think that Hamid will react to a sudden death and resurrection as calmly as Sasha did. When they tell him about the fire, and Zolf pulls up the sleeve of Hamid’s jalabiya to prove that there’s no way those scars could have healed this quickly, or that Hamid would have survived burning the way he did, he shuts up with a terrified look in his eye that means he knows they’re right.

Still, that doesn’t mean Hamid makes things  _ easy  _ for them. 

“I have a  _ family,” _ he argues in a hushed voice, as though he’s thought they’ve forgotten, standing outside of his  _ literal estate _ where all but one of his siblings live. “I can’t just… leave them behind? I won’t do it!”

And, there they have it. Hamid refuses to fake his death, and Zolf is tired of arguing, so he decides to make a quick note to table it for a few years in the future. Regardless, Hamid isn’t able to stay - keeping in contact with his family would be easier if they don’t notice him not aging, so he comes up with a scheme, traveling around the world and sending them letters as he learns about different banking systems (or, something, Zolf kind of tuned out at that point) with Zolf and Sasha as “his bodyguards”. His parents don’t like it, but they don’t tell him no, either - something Zolf thinks he’s never actually  _ been  _ told in his life. Still, it’s as good a compromise as any. They can figure out the rest when… well, when it becomes too obvious that Hamid isn’t aging or changing at all. 

It also doesn’t take long for Zolf to learn that Hamid doesn’t react well to dying. Unlike Sasha, Hamid isn’t as quick or skilled, which isn’t his  _ fault,  _ but it does mean that he dies only a few weeks after setting off on his ‘grand world tour’, even with all the training that Zolf and Sasha have been trying to give him. Zolf doesn’t know what he’d expected. And, honestly? He can't blame him. Dying  _ sucks.  _

“First one’s always the worst,” Zolf says, as sympathetically as he knows how, and Hamid doesn't respond, still basically hyperventilating as he kneels on the floor. They’d been investigating some local religious leader who was running the community through fear, and Hamid had served as the perfect bait. He was a much better fighter now thanks to Zolf and Sasha’s combined efforts, but he was still  _ new,  _ and he’d gotten a ritualistic dagger to the heart before Zolf and Sasha could block it. They’d summarily dispatched the priest before Zolf had pulled the sword out of Hamid’s heart (sure, it went against all of his medical training, but medical training doesn’t apply to a single aspect of their entire situation, so he doesn’t feel bad telling the little Erika voice in the back of his head to shove it). 

Hamid had come back to consciousness suddenly and seemingly against his will, and now he’s unsteady on all fours on the floor. Zolf goes over and sits next to him in a show of support, and Hamid nearly collapses into him, head and shoulders resting heavy against Zolf’s side. 

Sasha joins them - not touching, not  _ yet - _ but she  _ is  _ there, sitting opposite Zolf as she wraps her arms around her knees. Together, they sit there as Hamid’s hyperventilating evens out as he matches his breath to Zolf’s pulse and quiet counting out loud. Zolf exchanges a look with Sasha, unsure what to say. Sometimes, you just don’t need to say  _ anything,  _ and eventually Hamid falls asleep against Zolf, curled up in on himself while Sasha and Zolf keep watch, silent guardians in the night. 

They sit there until the night turns to day, sun slowly rising over the mountains and shining in through the stained glass as it casts a dappled coloured glow over the three of them, silent and still.

—

**[1457 A.D.]**

It’s a while before they get a new member of the group. Zolf had, rather ridiculously, he supposes, assumed that they’d been  _ done  _ with the whole thing already, but after waking up from a dream where he’s drowning, water filling his lungs and slowly,  _ slowly  _ suffocating him until his vision fades into nothingness, he realises that it’s not over yet. Not for them.

He wakes with a start, hands clutching at his throat as he coughs, leaning over the side of the bed as he dry heaves. Sasha does much the same - keeping quiet as she always does. In the other bed, Hamid shoots upright with a muffled scream as his hand claps over his mouth, tears slipping from the corner of his eyes as he backs up to the headboard, breathing heavily and staring forward, eyes unseeing. 

“What the hell was that?” Hamid gasps, looking around wildly. His hands scrabble at the sheets, desperate for something to hold, and Zolf feels a pang of sympathy in his gut at the tears sending streaks down his face. “I saw - saw -“

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Zolf mutters, and then ducks as Hamid throws a pillow at him.

“This is  _ serious,  _ Zolf!” Hamid cries, and Zolf feels a little bad for being so cavalier when Hamid seems to be genuinely distressed. It’s - it’s not an excuse, really, but Zolf’s been around for a long time, now, and he’s forgotten how it feels to… be experiencing all of this as something new. 

He shares a look with Sasha, who looks just as if not  _ more  _ uncomfortable and out of her depth, and so Zolf sighs and stands, wiping his sweaty palms on his sweatpants. 

“Sorry,” he says, going over and sitting across from Hamid on the bed. “I don’t - this - er, look. I’m not the best at. This bit.” He takes his hand and lays it around Hamid’s shoulders, pulling him into himself a bit, and Hamid goes willingly, if a bit slowly. “This… doesn’t happen often, and - I dunno, I should have warned you, but, well. Didn’t really think it would come up, if I’m being fully honest? So. Sorry, about that. This isn’t one of the fun bits.”

Hamid finally looks up at him, tear tracks drying on his cheeks, and wraps his arms around his stomach. “What does it  _ mean?”  _

“Someone else out there is like us,” Zolf explains. “You remember that weird dream you had, about me and Sasha? That’s how this works. Someone becomes immortal, and we… dream about each other. To help us find each other, I guess. We don’t know why someone’s chosen, we don’t know when it will happen next, but this is how we know  _ when  _ it’s happened. S’how we found you. How I found Sasha.”

“Actually,” Sasha piped up from the corner where she’s just taken another swig of whiskey, “I found  _ you.” _

Zolf gives her a look. “Not the  _ point,  _ Sasha.” She pouts a bit, grumbling under her breath, and Zolf rubs at his temples before turning back to Hamid. “Look. The point  _ is,  _ there’s someone else out there who’s dealing with the fact that they really  _ should  _ be dead, and we’re the only people in the world who know what they’re going through, yeah?”

“We have to find them,” Sasha adds. “Like what we did with you. It’s - dying and coming back… it ain’t. Natural. If someone catches on… could be your death, yeah?”

Hamid nods, slowly. “It makes… sense, I suppose,” he says, but doesn’t look entirely comforted by the thought. 

“Did you recognise anything from the dream?” Zolf asks, and Hamid nods. 

“It was Amsterdam,” Hamid says. “I went there on holiday once, with my…” he trails off, looking troubled. It’s been roughly 500 years since he’d had to finally decide to leave his family behind and move on, but it’s never gotten any easier for him to speak about them. Zolf can sympathise; Feryn’s been gone for nearly 1500 years, now, and not a day goes by that Zolf doesn’t wonder about what life would be like if he were still here. 

Sasha and Zolf exchange a look, and then Zolf stands up, clapping his hands together.

“Alright,” he says, trying to cover up the awkwardness and also give Hamid an out. “Get some sleep, if you can. Got a long day tomorrow. We’ll start off to Amsterdam in the morning. If what I remember is right, it’s a big trading city. Should be easy enough to get there, yeah?”

“Okay,” Hamid whispers, but he doesn’t lay down, curling up on himself. Zolf doesn’t know what else he can do, so he just gives Hamid a quick pat on the shoulder and retreats to his own bed, trying to get some rest before they head out the next morning. 

Amsterdam is a busy and bustling place, and Grizzop… isn’t what any of them expected, but if  _ anyone  _ was going to end up as an immortal being doing right in the world, he fits the bill to a T. He’s got a righteous sort of moral anger about him, and reminds Zolf a bit of himself as a kid, before he’d grown out of that. 

It doesn’t take long to lay it out for him. Zolf’s glad they have Hamid, now. He’s better at speaking than both Zolf and Sasha combined, and even though he has the least amount of experience with the whole being immortal schtick, he’s got a knack for explaining how it goes. 

Grizzop, unlike Hamid, doesn’t waste time in believing them about all of it, just shrugs and asks where they’re going to be helping next. Zolf supposes it’s the best that they’re going to do.

“Mate, I woke up at the bottom of the Amstel with chains wrapped ‘round my ankles,” Grizzop explains. “And then I woke up there  _ again  _ after drowning a second time. You say I can’t stay dead? Already knew that. The explanation just adds context.”

Zolf feels a bit wrong-footed by that, but doesn’t push. “Er. Good, I suppose. So you’re coming with us, then?” he asks. 

“It’s well good,” Sasha pipes up, munching on herring chips. “Get to save the world, yeah?”

Grizzop nods. “Good. I’ve got unlimited time, might as well use it for something productive.” His eyes shutter for a bit as he stares back at the city. “Not got anyone to stay for, anyway.”

And with that, they set off. Grizzop takes to the life like a fish to water (a metaphor Zolf isn’t sure is completely appropriate, considering how he died, but it’s still  _ apt).  _

Grizzop dying is nearly as quiet as Sasha is. He gets a spear through the throat and another through the skull and one more through his chest and collapses to the ground, and then the metal creaks and shifts as it’s pushed out by his body, until his skin is knitting itself back together. He comes back with a muffled shout that turns into a mix between a growl and a groan, and his fingers are white knuckles as his hands clench into fists. 

“Well. That’s deeply unpleasant,” Grizzop says through gritted teeth, but he takes Zolf’s hand and lets himself be pulled to his feet. “I see why you all try to avoid that now. Hurts like a  _ bitch.” _

“You’ll get used to it,” Zolf says, and Grizzop barks a dry laugh. “Eventually.”

“Sure,” Grizzop says. “Take a few spears to the face, get used to the feeling. Why not.”

“Just be more dodgy!” Sasha calls from across the battlefield, where her and Hamid had made quick work of the rest of the combatants. Hamid delicately wipes the blood on his short sword off onto one of the fallen soldier's coats, and turns to face them with a bright smile and a wave.

“Fine!” Grizzop calls back, cupping his hands around his mouth. “ _ Ow _ ,” he says a moment later, looking down at the spear still stuck in his stomach. 

“You alright?” Zolf asks, clapping him gently on the shoulder. 

Grizzop smiles up at him, all blood and teeth, and pulls the last spear out, letting it clatter to the ground below. 

“ _ Peachy.” _

—

**[1712 A.D.]**

“What the  _ fuck,”  _ Grizzop seethes, staring at the three of them in turn, “was  _ that _ .”

He’s nearly shaking in a mix of anger and fear and confusion, and when Sasha takes a step toward him he pulls out his bow, knuckles white where they grip the wood. Sasha pauses, hands held up to show she isn’t a threat, but even if Grizzop did shoot her, it’s not like she would die anyway. 

(They’ve, uh. All killed each other a fair few times, actually. Always accidental - although there was that time when Sasha wanted to check if she was fast enough to catch an arrow flying at her. Spoiler: she wasn’t.)

“We have dreams of the others,” Hamid explains. He looks fairly shaken up about it as well, hands trembling over the blanket, but he pushes them away and out of sight when he catches Zolf watching. “When there’s another one of us. It’s how Zolf and Sasha found me, and how we found you. Whoever this person is… they’ve had dreams of us, too. They will until we meet.”

Zolf clears his throat; he can still feel the dirt in it from the dream, can still feel how heavy the mud was as it caged him in, trapped him until he couldn’t breathe anymore, and everyone turns to look at him. 

“It’s another thing you get used to,” he says, and Grizzop scoffs. But, his shoulders do relax, at least a little bit, so Zolf counts it as a victor anyway. “Anyone know where it is?” 

“It’s Kenya,” Hamid says without hesitation. He spends a lot of his free time researching different areas of the world; it's helpful whenever they need to travel somewhere, that Hamid usually knows the language and customs and can share with the rest of them. “The clothing, the homes... it has to be.”

“I’ll go,” Grizzop volunteers, and he’s vibrating in his seat. He looks like he’s on the verge of either a breakdown or a. Well, Zolf doesn’t know, but  _ something,  _ and he’s not going to be the one to tell Grizzop no. “Sasha?”

Sasha starts in the corner, nearly dropping her knife as she looks up. “Er. Sure?” 

Zolf’s tempted to ask Hamid to go with them, because Grizzop can be a little, well,  _ blunt _ , and Sasha is just. Pretty silent, especially around new people. 

“You two mind?” he asks instead, and Sasha and Grizzop share a look and shrug. “Alright, then.”

They’re actually not far from Kenya, which is going to make this little excursion much easier. Zolf and Sasha find a safe house for the time being - it’s a small hut in the shadows of Mount Kenya, far away and secluded from the rest of the tribes, and once they’re all set up, Sasha and Grizzip head off to meet the new person and convince them to join their little group.

Zolf definitely doesn’t stress. Definitely doesn’t pace around the safe room for the few hours it takes for Grizzop and Sasha to make the trek from the hut they’re squatting in, to the mountain, and back. And they do come back, eventually, bringing with them one of the tallest, most well-built women Zolf’s ever seen. She’s so bright and bubbly that Zolf’s almost surprised Sasha wasn’t physically repelled by her at first meeting. Then he sees Sasha stalling and blushing when the woman smiles at her, and he thinks he gets it a bit more. 

Zolf sticks out a hand and she takes it. She’s got a firm, strong grip, farmer’s hands for sure. “Zolf. Good to meet you.”

“Azu,” she responds, and shakes once before letting it drop. Hamid follows suit, but ends up hugging her instead, which Azu happily returns.

“It’s so good to meet you, Azu!” he says, and Azu beams at him. He leads her off to show her the pack that they’ve gotten ready for her - mostly Hamid’s doing, honestly, and Zolf hangs back 

Based on what Sasha told him and what he’s seen, Zolf realises that Azu’s accepted the entire thing with a sort of grace that he hasn’t seen… well, ever, really. There might have been someone like that in the early days, went by the name of Rose, between finding Sasha and Hamid, but their face is nothing more than a memory now. 

Azu is… wonderful, honestly. Her and Hamid get on like a house on fire, Sasha  _ actually  _ opens up a bit more, Grizzop and her get into rousing moral debates, and Azu’s equally content to just sit with Zolf as they watch the sun on the horizon, in silence. 

She lasts longer than most of them did before her first - second, Zolf supposes - death. Zolf thinks it’s because she’s better with a shield than the rest of them, but he hasn’t been able to prove the theory. It happens while they’re working on preventing a coup, trying to take down a rather large group of dissidents. Zolf and Azu had taken the left wing, Hamid and Grizzop the right, and that had left Sasha to clean up the stragglers who tried to escape. 

It had been going well - Zolf knows more ways to kill a man than each person in that room combined, and they’re just an angry group of anarchists who want to drive the country into chaos. They hadn’t been much of a challenge, which is why Zolf had left his guard down, thinking that they’d cleared the room. 

He hadn’t noticed the guy coming for his back, but Azu had, stepping in front and taking the sword for him. It pierces right through her chest and she drops, unmoving, to the floor. Zolf makes short work of the man after that, and then falls to his knees at Azu’s side. 

It takes her less time than the rest to come back, and her face looks… peaceful, almost? He’s used to the terrifying stillness of Sasha’s body, ready for Hamid’s panicking when he’s come back to himself, and finally come to terms with Grizzop’s near-manic energy once he’s alive again. Azu is… different. Quiet, like Sasha, but more like a soft breath of air as opposed to a bowstring being stretched taut. Her skin starts to heal quicker than the others, and it leaves less of a scar on her skin. She comes back with a soft sigh, eyes fluttering open as she pushes herself up onto her elbows and knees, glancing around in confusion. Recognition hits when she spots Zolf, hovering over her like a worried mother hen.

“That wasn’t pleasant,” Azu comments, and Zolf reaches down a hand to pull her to her feet. 

“Grizzop said much the same. And, no. Usually isn’t,” he agrees, and Azu hums a bit before standing on her own power, only a little bit unsteady as she finds her balance again. “I owe you one.”

Azu shakes her head. “You’re part of my family now, Zolf. I’ll protect all of you.”

He smiles at that, and leans into Azu’s shoulder. “Look. I’ll take the hit next time. Now, come on,” he says, and beckons Azu to follow him. “Let’s go find the others.”

—

**[1926 A.D.]**

_ Chemicals pouring in a beaker - shouting - a bright green glow - explosion -  _

Zolf wakes with a start, hand instinctively going to the axe leaned up against his bed as the adrenaline pumps through his veins. Around the room, there’s a mix of shouts and grunts as everyone claws their way back into consciousness. Hamid is grasping at something that none of them can see, eyes still closed as he shakes, and Azu leans over to let him rest against her side. 

“Not another one,” Zolf mutters. Gods, it’s been… 200 years, give or take, since Azu had shown up. He’d thought they were - thought they were  _ done.  _ That this was it, that this was  _ enough. _ They don’t need someone else, don’t want another person to have to deal with the intricacies of immortality, not  _ now,  _ not when the entire world is on brink of collapse. 

He hears Grizzop curse under his breath as he stalks out of the room, grabbing his arrows on the way. Each time, the dreams hit him harder; no one’s quite sure why, considering they really,  _ really  _ can’t get a scientist on this, but everyone has their hunches. “Alright. What did we all see?”

“Japan,” Sasha says, half of her face hidden in shadows, and Zolf sighs as he leans back against the wall. 

“Fuck. That’s the other side of the world,” he mutters, and Sasha shrugs. 

“I’m not the one who chose it,” she says. “I think I could pinpoint it, if we had a map.”

“Good. Do it,” Zolf says, and tosses her the rucksack with the map in it. Sasha catches it easily and pulls the parchment out, studying it with a faraway look in her eyes. For some reason, she’s the one who remembers the dreams best, and she points to a spot on the map with her finger as Hamid tosses her a pen, looking exhausted as he leans against Azu’s side. The dreams hit him hard, too; not in the same way as Grizzop, they just leave him drained, but it’s always a few minutes before Hamid’s up for any sort of discussion. 

“How are we gonna get there?” Zolf asks, running a hand through his hair and leaning back. “Boat? Train?”

“Boss, we’re in  _ England, _ ” Sasha says, raising an eyebrow. “It’ll take us weeks to get to Japan. 

It takes a minute on a plane.”

Zolf isn’t going to go on a plane. No one can convince him otherwise, not when there are perfectly viable alternate methods of transportation out there, and nothing they say is going to -

Zolf goes on a plane. 

Zolf  _ hates  _ planes. They’re just. Large, metal death traps. And who thought up throwing a hunk of metal into the sky in the hopes that it would fly? Zolf wants to have a not-so-nice word with them. 

It doesn’t help that he knows he can’t die. He can throw up just fine, and he’s yet to take a flight where that doesn’t happen. Hamid has started just handing him the barf bag when they sit down, which Zolf would use to slap him for the cheekiness if he didn’t think Hamid was being sincere. 

This time is no different, but Zolf doesn’t like to linger on the details. 

They land in Japan and Zolf shields his eyes from the sun, tilting his cap as much as he can to keep it out of his eyes. Next to him, Sasha shrinks even more into her hoodie, head barely visible over the top. Azu and Grizzop got rid of their standard armor for a skirt and blouse (Azu) and a pair of loose trousers and a jumper (Grizzop). Hamid’s still in his standard suit, a look he hasn’t felt the need to change in nearly 350 years. 

Zolf gets a car and ushers everyone in. It’s a bit of a squeeze, but Hamid sits on Azu’s lap and they make it work. He listens to Sasha’s instructions as they go down the road, finally pulling up in front of a joint house and what Zolf thinks might be - or used to be, based on how half the wall is blown out - a laboratory. 

He turns to look at the rest of them; Hamid is napping in the back, curled up on himself, and Zolf’s tempted to wake him up until a disappointed look from Azu changes his mind. They’re both out, then. 

“Grizzop?” Zolf asks, but Grizzop just finishes sharpening one of his arrows and doesn't respond. “Fine. Sasha?”

She pulls a face and sighs, but follows him out of the car as they go up to the door. Zolf raps his knuckles on it, and the door slides open, revealing the same person they’d all seen in their dreams. 

They’re tall, taller than Zolf was expecting, with a shock of white hair that looks like it’s been electrocuted with how it stands on end. Zolf sticks his hand out.

“Good to meet you,” he introduces, because Sasha sure as hell isn’t going to be the one to  _ start  _ talking. “My name’s Zolf Smith, and you can’t die.”

They take it… remarkably well, actually, and usher them inside. Turns out they’re not completely surprised to see them, and when Zolf sees the wreckage of the lab, he understands why.

“I mean, there’s no  _ way  _ I survived that, and look!” They pull their hair back and point to their ear - what’s left of it, specifically. “This? Being healed this quickly? I’m a  _ scientist _ , Mr. Smith, I know how to look at the evidence presented to me and create an understandable, working theory. A theory you just  _ confirmed!”  _

“Uh. Cool?” he says, slightly confused, but Cel doesn’t skip a beat, dragging down a suitcase from the top of their cabinet and stuffing clothes and beakers into it haphazardly. Zolf exchanges a look with Sasha, who just shrugs and shakes her head. Cel slams their hands down on the top of the suitcase and turns toward the both of them with a big grin. 

“Okay. Let’s go!” they say. 

And go they do, Zolf introducing them to the team and driving off to find their next big job.

Cel dying is… Zolf doesn’t know what to call it other than scientific _.  _ They seem, well, incredibly unbothered by the fact that all of them just come back from death with zero explanation, and constantly interrogate the rest of them whenever they die to figure out how they feel, tracking how long it takes, taking samples from the weapons that killed them - if possible. 

One of the times, Cel dies while the team is in Germany from an errant shotgun bullet - it’s an early one, just a few years after they joined, and Zolf squats by them, a habit he still hasn’t broken in over 1500 years. Cel comes back to themselves quickly, making a series of groans and grunts as they shift around on the ground, bullet clattering to the floor below. They sit up in a flash and then immediately wobble, grabbing onto Zolf’s shoulders for balance. 

“Oh,  _ boy _ , does that  _ smart,  _ okay,  _ wow,  _ uh. You  _ weren’t  _ kidding when you said not to get in the way of a bullet, Mr. Smith, you - you really weren’t.  _ Ow,  _ that  _ hurts,”  _ they say, voice thin as they take a sharp breath, but then the skin knits over. “Okay, uh, pain is… going down. My gods, it’s a marvel every time, isn’t it?”

“Loses the luster when you get half of yourself blown off and need to wait out the pain,” Zolf mutters, but Cel ignores him in favor of picking up the bullet from the ground and slipping it into one of their many,  _ many  _ pockets.

They pat down their chest, inspect the newly formed scars on their arms, and ‘ooh’ and ‘aww’ at how neatly they’ve healed. It kind of feels like they’re running an experiment, which Zolf supposes makes sense based on everything else about them. 

“You know,” Zolf comments, “you’re taking this better than anyone else has.”

Cel laughs and stops inspecting their fully-healed wounds. “Really? I mean - it’s just so  _ interesting,  _ like - have none of you studied it before? Honestly? Even just - I don’t know, running some tests on it? I wonder if there’s certain kinds of injuries that heal faster, or if a specific  _ weapon  _ affects it, and what’s the  _ brain  _ doing in all this, how can it…” they continue to ramble as Zolf picks up his own ax from the ground and starts to walk away, leaving them behind. They’ll catch up eventually - this happens relatively often, Zolf knows what to expect. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Cel says, and jumps in front of him to keep him from leaving. Zolf raises an eyebrow, unimpressed, but they don’t seem to care. With a strange, excited look in their eyes, they pull out a notebook and click their pen at hyper speed. “Mr. Smith, if I  _ asked  _ you to kill me -“

Zolf stares at them, before shaking his head in disbelief. “No, Cel.”

“But what if -“

“ _ No _ .”

“Aw.”

—

**[2018 A.D.]**

“We need a name,” Hamid announces out of the blue, because of  _ course  _ he does. They’ve been working together for, well, centuries now, and he brings this up about once every 75 years. And they still haven’t found a name that everyone agrees on, so Zolf doesn’t know why Hamid thinks this time will be any different.

“My vote is no,” he says, “and is this  _ really  _ the time?”

Hamid shrugs, and the gun strapped across his chest shifts with the motion. “You never say there’s a  _ good  _ time!”

“That’s because you always bring it up  _ right  _ before a fight!” Zolf hisses, and starts rummaging around in his rucksack for the charges they’d packed before leaving the safe house. He hears Hamid sigh, petulant, and knows that if he looks up, he’s going to be pouting. “Bring it up  _ before  _ we’re about to go into a deadly situation, maybe?”

“I never  _ think  _ about it then,” Hamid mutters, and Zolf finally looks up at him - yes, he’s pouting, because of  _ course  _ \- and has to wilfully resist rubbing at his temples. 

“Are they always… like this? Bickering like an old married couple?” Cel asks, and Sasha sighs. 

“Yes,” she says, sounding weary, “for the past 1400 years. You start learning how to tune it out.”

Zolf throws a piece of dirt at her - she dodges, which is fundamentally unfair, but he lets it go instead of throwing more. The sound of voices reaches them from inside and they all fall silent, all joking and teasing and bickering pushed to the side. 

He motions to Sasha and Grizzop to scope out the area, and they leave immediately. Hamid and Cel hang back as guards, scopes slowly surveying the landscape as they wait for Sasha and Grizzop to make a round of the complex. Zolf taps his fingers against his knee, filled with an anxious energy. Millennia of this and he still gets nervous before a job, even though it’s hard to cock it all up when you literally can’t die. 

Sasha and Grizzop come back before long, signalling that everything seems to be clear, and Zolf nods as they rejoin the party. 

He stalks forward, crouching in the dirt as he motions to the rest of them to crowd around the door. At least prosthetics are better now, he thinks grimly; this would have been a bitch of a job with some of the stuff he’d been using a century ago. 

Azu sets the charges up against the door and backs away - they’ll be a controlled blast, not much to worry about, but they all still hunker behind a nearby wall, poised on the balls of their feet to run in the second the blast goes off. Zolf counts it down in his head as Azu mouths along, and the second the blast goes off they’re all on their feet. Azu leads the charge, going in heavy through the explosion-weakened door, and the rest file in after her, a cohesive, tight team.

They find themselves in a small metal room with no windows and no doors apart from the one they came in through, and Zolf’s stomach starts to flip. There’s no one inside except for a small… Zolf isn’t sure, really, but it almost looks like a crystal. There’s a small beeping noise and then it emits a high-pitched shriek, nearly deafening all of them as they clap their hands over their ears. On either side of him, he can see his team falling to the ground on their knees, and Zolf follows soon after, face scrunched up in pain. 

The noise comes to an abrupt stop, and Zolf hesitates before glancing up at the sound of heavy booted feet running along the ground. Soldiers - low level, in stealth combat gear, fill the room, carrying nasty looking weapons. It was a trap after all, Zolf realises, and then there are nearly fifteen guns trained on the lot of them, none of the soldiers even speaking a word.

“Oh,  _ fuck  _ us,” Grizzop mutters, breaking the silence, and then all the mooks open fire at once. 

They’re shot to hell, because of course they are. Bullets piercing skin, tearing through flesh, and it hurts like a  _ mother _ , just like dying always does, but they’re all helpless to stop it, a barrage of fire that they never had a chance to duck away from. Zolf feels the final bullet enter his skin as he drops, lifeless, to the cold floor, slick with a mix of his and his team’s blood. 

Darkness. Peace. 

And then Zolf gasps, nearly silent as he feels his body pushing the bullets out of his skin, tears neatly fusing themselves back together as they leave nothing but a scar behind as evidence that anything ever happened. He can hear Azu at his side, slowly shifting on the floor as she comes back to herself as well. The mooks are walking away from them, sounding as cheery as anything as they clap each other on the back for soundly getting all of them in one shot, and Zolf would be smiling sardonically if he wasn’t busy trying not to cry out in pain as his ribs start to snap back into place. He pushes himself to his knees and takes a few deep breaths, before standing up on unsteady feet. 

That bit never does get easier. 

Zolf does a quick check of his team, glancing left and right before the mooks in front of them realise that they, well, aren’t dead. Grizzop looks the worst, blood streaming down his face from catching most of the bullets in his head, and he looks back at Zolf with a righteous vengeance in his eyes as he spits out a mess of blood and bullet. Hamid looks as unhappy as he always does after coming back, and Zolf knows he’s going to be whinging about all the blood staining his clothes later on. Azu looks more or less fine, even with blood dripping down from her chest onto the floor below. Cel looks almost exhilarated; they always seem to gain energy after being killed and coming back, which Zolf can’t believe, honestly. Sasha also looks a mess, hair matted, but she meets Zolf’s eyes and nods, twin knives in her hands as she shifts her stance slightly. 

“Oi,” Zolf calls, and the mooks all freeze before one slightly turns their head, spotting all six of them standing there, smirking. Grizzop cracks his knuckles, and one of them flinches. “Well, was gonna say you  _ missed,  _ but…” he lets himself trail off, gesturing to the blood and gore strewn across the floor. 

The mooks look on in horror, a few of them rubbing at their eyes and pinching at their skin as though this were a dream. They seem too shocked to even move, to grab their guns and reload.

“Sorry about that,” Hamid says brightly, and Zolf  _ really  _ doesn’t understand how he can look that put together even when riddled with bullet holes. “It’s not going to be that easy to get rid of us.”

Azu cracks her neck and more metal clinks on the ground as the bullets push themselves out of her skin. This seems to spur them into action, all shouting and strangled noises as they all turn, raising their guns again as they realise that they’d completely unloaded on Zolf and his team, and their bullets now litter the floor where they’re all standing. 

Zolf can’t help it; he smirks as he pulls out his axe, the same one that he’s been carrying around since his first death, and levels it at one of them, fear shining in their eyes. 

“Let’s get to work.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos’ are super appreciated!


End file.
